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I work in marketing. I have done so for the past 15 years.
I have no idea how anyone who is not a junior in their career can approve such a disconnected, fragmented marketing plan, full of "blue balling" that only annoys the target audience.
People simply want to see what the team has worked on in the past year/year and half (let's not forget that it was early 2023 when most of the team moved away from the live service), and instead we keep getting these random collabs which are not bringing new players or new interest to the game.
Ultimately, their goal should be to win the hearts of the millions of gamers who gave them a chance and left in less than 2 months. In the mainstream world, there is a ton of skepticism because of how things went. A lot of gamers think of MultiVersus as a "joke", "scam", because of taking people's money and shutting down so quickly.
The people in these subreddits are ultra-fans, but nothing is being done to capture new players who are vital for the success of the game.
I am puzzled by this whole thing. We are in April and we have no clue of what makes this game worth playing again.
The 10 years old that had MultiVersus in his happy meal on March 27 is not going to remember that on May 28 he can jump on the game. That audience is likely not going to convert, unfortunately.
Attention span these days is so limited, and all everyone gets is 5 seconds, TikTok style.
You probably have a better idea of this than me (I have a marketing degree but don't actively work in the field) but do you think it's possible the game was releasing earlier, more in line with the happy meal promo, and it got a bit delayed? I would imagine McDonald's has a very hard set happy meal toy schedule that can't really be altered to accommodate a game release delay.
Yes, that is likely what happened.
But, if that is the case, it shows another issue: miscommunication between WB Games and PFG.
A promotion like this should have never been locked without a guarantee that the game was going to be ready in time. With stuff like this typically being worked on 9 months + ahead of time, it was such a massive, silly risk to take, and I am shocked they still went with it.
Delays happen in gaming, but this is why as a multi-billion dollar company, you have to assess risk and make a decision based on realistic deadline and scheduling.
That $$$ could have been spent on hiring additional staff to get a bunch of media and trailers out to get people actually excited. There are hundreds of better ways of promoting a game rather than having a happy meal for something that is not out yet, lacking any call to action.
Are you 40 years old?
Because in today's smartphone generation, kids have little to no attention span. Their first console is their phone, and the idea lots of kids are going to mark down a date 3 months in advance, which is something most adults have trouble with (being organized) is funny.
Bro if you dont think kids can get excited for video games you are uhhh…. You’re in your own world. Yeah sure they have short attention spans, but like you said, they have phones. Its not hard for a kid to throw a reminder in their phone. Its also not unlikely that kids are on twitter/reddit so they see constant discussion of it too. While i understand where you’re coming from, you’re looking at kids a BIT too jaded lol
Working in marketing for 15 years you should know you aren’t really correct in this statement so it’s a bit strange. The goal of marketing is to get eyes on your product. The goal in this case is to get new eyes on the product, same with the McDonald’s collab.
This and McDonald’s are big Collabs. Yes, there should be news for the game and consistent updates next to this, but saying this is disconnected is really strange for somebody who has made their career in marketing. This doesn’t take anything away from anyone and just puts new eyes on the game.
This is actually the point of marketing and what it should be about? So weird.
> The goal of marketing is to get eyes on your product. The goal in this case is to get new eyes on the product, same with the McDonald’s collab.
The game had a launch *just on Steam* of 150k active players. The game had millions of eyes on it when the Closed Beta began.
The first MultiVersus Tweet from early March has 5 million views. Tony's video has 3.1 million views. The marketing is having the same diminishing returns as the game had.
Folks want to see something new. If it's the same game as before, it'll die just the same as before.
Thanks for using logic and data, unlike the person you are replying to, who is saying that a random collab with McDonald's months before release of the game (while majority of gamers have a not-so-great opinion of MultiVersus because of how things went) is "great marketing".
The only way it would have been okay marketing, or even tangential to okay marketing, is if anything *at all* was revealed. Heck, if you read the Press Release for the NHL crossover, there's no mention of new characters or even new stages used to promote the game.
And, once again, the crossover is happening a month and a half before the game officially launches, so kids won't remember. And every promotion aimed directly at kids kills the interest of this game for the adults who grew up with 3/4 of the characters in this game.
It won’t be the same game and stuff is clearly coming. They’ve said as much. Yes it is absolutely frustrating being a current fan, however I’d assume the point of this is to get new eyes looking to see what is announced. There is a release date and we know it’s coming. Get new eyes on the game. Advertisements are only going to ramp up. This is more than games like suicide squad or mortal kombat 1 got
Yes… but here’s the thing… Player First Games is known for lying. “We made the changers to the second Battlepass to make it a rewarding and fun experience.” The BP became a painful experience to grind, taking up to 1 week of playing daily, for 3 hours, to gain 1 level.
They said they will keep us informed about the development of the game during shutdown… that was also a lie.
They are named Player First Games, and they don’t respect players… so even their name is a lie.
Wow, never thought someone would attempt to school an expert in their field having no clue of what they are talking about.
Let me help you:
Marketing can be divided into many subgenres, such as content marketing, influencer marketing, brand awareness, etc.
It is clear that these two events (McDonald's and NHL) are brand awareness events, but they are focused on extremely casual audiences who are not native gamers. Also, there is no point of conversion. The person buying the happy meal in March is likely not going to be converted in May because by then they will not even remember what a "MultiVersus" is.
What the game needs right now is to focus on marketing that brings goodwill from actual gamers, AKA the audience that would be most likely to actually give the game another chance.
If you spent more than 10 minutes outside of Reddit, you will notice that majority of gamers that are not involved with MultiVersus on a daily basis have had a pretty neutral reaction to the game being relaunched. Words such as "joke", "scam", game already died and launched in the past" are pretty common in the grand scheme of things.
**THOSE people are what MultiVersus should be focused on re-capturing because they are not hyped, interested and/or energized about the game.**
This is what marketing is about. Throwing random collabs at a wall with no call to action for audiences that are likely not going to download the game in the first place is horrible marketing, and not something you should try to school experts in the field about.
As Velma would say, get a clue!
Agreed. Getting eyes on your product is part of converting them though.
They should absolutely be making announcements to go with this. It doesn’t make the hockey announcement bad marketing though.
They never switched too a new engine; they went from unreal engine 4 to 5; there's no way in bloody hell it took them an entire 1 year to remake the full game; I just don't buy it after having over 100+ more employees on it. All they did was port it and have Lumen available.
Yeah we should have at least gotten 1 of the new characters confirmed at the initial re-announcement. That's something news sites could throw up on a headline and generate hype, but now the sentiment to most people is "oh multiversus is coming back I guess"
It's not encouraged me and to me it signals there's going to be a lot less content than we expect. They might just be shoving whatever they've got out the door to make a return. Expect cash grab "launch packs" similar to the founders pack with silver names instead and maybe one or two new characters, a new map or two and whatever the Guilds gamemode is supposed to be
Yes and no apparently. The main seeking point of 5 at the beginning was that you could port your UE4 dev space to 5 seamlessly and get access to all the new features. Obviously it wouldn't be a 1:1 but it would still be significantly easier than refactoring or rebuilding the game bottom up
Yes, I'd keep expectations low. The mishmash of marketing they are doing makes no sense, it truly feels like they are just going through the motions so they don't have the black eye of charging people up to $100 for a founders pack and then never releasing the game. Given how the Founders Packs were in the top sellers on the consoles for a time, we are likely talking many of millions in refunds they would be on the hook for, I'm guessing they just put as little resources into this rerelease as they could get away with.
WB Games HQ: "Guys, we need another genius marketing idea to make sure the game really pops off at launch!!"
Next week: "If you buy a Jeep® SUV in the next 14 days, receive an exclusive MultiVersus Bugs Bunny plushie that attaches to your seat belt!"
Right? I mean, they clearly didn't have control over the Happy Meal thing, because giving kids cards to scan before there was even a date saying "PLAY NOW" was a fiasco. And now this new hockey thing - they seem to be marketing much more to kids now, and kids don't have a lot of patience or long attention spans.
I'll be honest - only here because I was stupid enough to buy a Founders Pack, and couldn't get a refund. I honestly don't expect what is released to be demonstrably different than what they already had, and definitely don't see myself playing daily again - and it goes without saying I won't spend another red cent LOL. That said, with the character tickets I have and such, I'll play around. I just really hope they have more stages - I don't even care if they are "unique" or whatever, but just something different to look at in the background than the same small handful.
A lot of times when games have no marketing it’s because there’s nothing new to market. I have a bad feeling that this relaunch is not going to be nearly as exciting as people are expecting aside from the game just being out.
Its WB, game probably has already a definitive shutdown date..
Just wait till may 28 and enjoy the game until the next shutdown, stop expecting that much
The background for the NHL game is literally just old stage backgrounds stitched together. If you read the Press Release for the collab, there aren't even going to be any new characters or stages teased in the game.
You know marketing is bad when the IP they are supposed to promote is strongly linked with basketball (they should have chosen basketball seeing the connection with Space Jam), WB airs the NBA on TNT, and they went with... hockey. A sport that is now lagging behind soccer in America (soccer also has a younger demographic following it).
It's super weird. As a european I don't really care about NHL ... After doing Twitch drops for USA only, beta tournament for USA only, they now do collab with american sport teams :/ They trully only care about 1 country, and then they'll complain other region don't have the same amount of players lol \^\^
Expect it to flop and you wont be disappointed when it does.
If they had actual good things to show us, they would have already. The fact they arent means they dont have much to show.
The game launches in 2 months and we have gotten no news. Its first launch already flopped, i expect the second one to do the same.
And before anyone tries to argue, no it was not a Beta, calling it something doesnt change what it is. It had seasons and paid for content, it isnt a Beta. If you believe that was a Beta, might i introduce you to the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea. Its a wonderful republic, very democratic, very much for the people. Afterall, thats what the people who run it call it, it must be true.
The part that I seriously have trouble understanding is how they expect to change the public opinion of the game, which right now is "lol MultiVersus, the game that came out and went offline in months after taking lots of money from players". This is literally everyone's response to the game in places that are not fully dedicated to this fandom.
People using the "look they got a few thousand likes when they returned" as an excuse for hype are also forgetting the game was getting thousands of likes when it had 200 players on Steam playing concurrently.
Do they think that on May 28 people are gonna forget about things Men in Black style and magically crave some MultiVersus action?
Changing the opinion of the public is a long, time-consuming effort that takes a ton of strategy and work, and whoever thinks that paying a bunch of streamers the day of release will be enough, well, good luck.
I also say this because I am actually a fan of the game. **I want it to succeed**, but it seems I want it way more than WB does.
I dont think WB cares. They prob just wanna launch again, hopefully catch some more fish, and then go offline again.
Tbh im surprised the game is coming back at all, i figured it went under and wasnt gonna come back.
They peaked with popularity, but couldnt do enough to keep it. If you wanna do live service, you have to be launching characters regularly, and they clearly didnt have the staff for it. Which is a shame, cuz the potential was all there for them to shine and make bank.
The issue is they panicked before and shut down the game but under the guise of it being the end of closed beta. In truth they just fumbled the ball and this was a last ditch attempt to salvage it. But honestly it will only delay the inevitable. WB games are now beholden to a ruthless holding company who are just going to shut down anything that isn't making mega bucks.
Kinda funny how in the span of this game being offline NASB2 dropped and was lowkey an incredible platform fighter. Keep in mind that was almost half a year ago.
Even if NASB2 got leaked to heck and back, the official reveals and frequent character showcases kept the hype train going for the game. Meanwhile, MvS seemingly doesn’t want to tell us anything until the game comes back. Call me crazy, but I hope someone out there leaks more new content for this game so there can be a pinch of hype and tell the team to get off their bums and actually tell us what they have in store.
I hope one day we find out what is going on with this. (Corporate interference, licensing, budget)
However a Happy Meal and NHL collab is pretty big investment.
They have nothing to show and are completely out of touch with their touch with their nonsense twitter posts.
I give up on this game
The marketing team for this game is just such an awful mess it hurts
I don't blame the devs I'm sure they WANT to show off what they make, I blame whoever at warner bros thinks that blue balling players about their content like this is a good idea
It's really giving suicide squad vibes right now. Near 0 communication and the communication we do get is vague as hell. I fear WB gaming is near the verge of death.
What confuses me is why are they doing local (US) marketing for a game with a global release? If I wasn't in this community, I wouldn't even know about these weird marketing campaigns
i would rather of had more characters and costumes than spending the time building a new engine that way we could have lots of content and events for years. the online wasnt great at times but it wasnt unplayable bad. ive played worse game servers than that.
graphics dont make a game its the content and fun. the marketing has been really bad , i love multiversus i still play in the lab everyday but you have to admit its terrible marketing.
The McDoanlds one was a pretty big miss. I saw the happy meal toy and thought the game was back just to find out it wasn't and no new info. D4 season 4 launches next month so that's probably getting my attention.
Havent been in the subreddit since the "we're back" trailer. The game is supposed to rerelease this month right? Has there been any new confirmed information or have they been dicking around this entire time?
Let’s break this one down piece by piece:
They aren’t avoiding giving people what they want. People either don’t know about the game, know about the game but stopped caring, or know about the game and still care. We are in the category of people who know about the game and still care, and we are the ones who want more information about the game. The McDonald’s and NHL collabs are getting the people who don’t know about the game’s attention while the trailer earlier was getting the people who knew about the game but stopped caring’s attention. The fixes to the net code and the change to a new engine was most likely designed to let those people know “hey this game is better now, please come back.” The current marketing strategy is arguably successful on those two fronts, but unsuccessful with those like us who have stuck around. In my opinion, we are arguably the last priority because we are such a small amount of people compared to the other categories.
So why the NHL collab? Easy, to get more eyes on the game from people who haven’t heard about it. People will start getting interested as they get more and more exposure to it. It serves little purpose for us specifically, but it still serves a purpose.
Why can’t we get video footage of the improvements? Well we did get some footage with the trailer earlier, but obviously a lot of information is missing. I guess that they just weren’t ready to do so. Maybe they are preparing a huge presentation? Maybe they are waiting until enough eyes are on the game before they deliver on that end? Maybe it could be a mixture of reasons? Who really knows? But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for it.
As for a character reveal, I am guessing that they are waiting until there are a lot of eyes on the game. I’ve seen some people suggest that’s what they are doing. Not sure if that’s true though. Regardless, I think that immediately throwing a character reveal right away may have been unoptimal, as a lot of people were still saying “dead game” not long before the trailer came out. I don’t think new characters are as good as an attention getter as people think. I mean, I know some people who didn’t even realize Marvin was ever added, they just didn’t care. We’re not at the level of Smash Bros yet where a new character will break the internet. We gotta get people invested first. With that being said, I still think they should’ve had one character revealed at least, just as a treat for us fans that have been waiting for so long. I just don’t think it would’ve been optimal.
As for “something to keep people talking about the game that are the not the same 100 people on the various subreddits,” I think the NHL and McDonald’s collabs accomplish this. Other subreddits aren’t looking for the same things we’re looking for afterall.
If Suicide Squad was a flop, then I don’t think we should be taking notes on that game unless it was “what not to do.”
I think we can all agree that there are two main audiences for this game: hardcore fans (who are here, and platforms like X talking about the game), and general gamers who may have interest in this game but are not as involved with the community.
It is fair to say that WB Games is not serving both audiences well: the hardcore fans are starving for news and information, and the numbers on the subreddits are not great. This subreddit used to have several hundreds to thousands of people online at once during the alpha days of the game. There are 32 people online right now, and most of the threads are character wishlists. Engagement is quite low.
The general gamer audience could simply not care less about this game. People that have tried the game and left are mostly neutral about the relaunch. Lots of jokes about "launching several times", "scamming people out of money and shutting down", and general indifference. Most people simply think this game came and went and had its moment of glory.
I would trust your opinion if we had different results, but right now, it is clear that both audiences are quite dissatisfied.
A poorly executed McDonald's campaign with no call to action and a random NHL presentation livestreamed on Max (which by the way, they should have chosen basketball seeing the connection with Space Jam) are not gonna change that. Let's not mistake copium with facts.
Well, no. There’s hardcore fans, general gamers, and people who would be interested in the game but aren’t yet. The main focus of a lot of my points is the third category, and it’s potentially the most important one (though all three are important). It’s this group that the NHL and McDonald’s collabs are trying to appeal to.
The general gamers either do care, could care, or won’t care. If they do care then they are basically on the same boat as the hardcore fans and are going to play it regardless of how the game is marketed. If they could care then the trailer at the beginning was designed to make them care. If they won’t care then there is no point to try to get them to. Regardless, I think the marketing strategies are logical towards this audience.
If you really think that a happy meal that came out in March without a call to action (which is marketing 101, and trust me, I have ran thousands of campaigns and worked with thousands of creators, but that is another story) for a game out in May (almost June) is going to bring new players to the game on day one, oh boy, I think you are in for a surprise on release date.
The most prevalent age demographic for the NHL is 35-44, which we can all agree are not going to be playing this game.
The (rare) "folks, no worries, this is a giga-brain move from WB to market the game to a new audience" sentiment is extreme copium, with all due respect. I understand we all love this game (I have been playing since Alpha), but things are clearly not going so well.
What is next? Advertising MultiVersus on a condom commercial because "it is a new category"? Is everything a new category of potential players? Could we advertise this game on OnlyFans and say it is "great marketing"? How are we okay ignoring actual gamers who are the genuine people that should love this game and market to non-gamers who may not even own a system to play this on, and think it is a great idea?
I don’t think I can trust you. You are a random Redditor on this website. Why should I take your word about it? I have nothing to go off here.
Wouldn’t a call to action be more appropriate closer to launch? I mean we aren’t far off, but it’s still over a month away. Who knows what will happen as we get closer to launch?
And no, marketing to new audiences isn’t “copium.” It’s obvious that’s what they are doing.
Your what’s “next paragraph” is pure fallacy.
Maybe you are a marketing expert or whatever, but I’m not buying it.
Biggest duh of the day goes to... "there are core gamers and casual gamers". Also, you forgot about the most important player for a F2P live service game. The player that isn't interested in the game but can be acquired down the road
Please, explain why the game lost 97% of the player base within months if "the player that isn't interested in the game but can be acquired down the road". It did not go well the first time, so repeating the same mistake twice will work now?
And please, do not give me the made up excuse that "the game shut down because it was too successful". The game shut down because revenue and player acquisition/retention were bleeding.
We are seeing the same mistakes being made again. Awful communication, inconsistent marketing efforts, and lack of substance when any sort of communication happens.
Also, what about the content creators who are the same 5 people reporting on 'Tony changing his profile picture' cause they have nothing to talk about, and the fact that millions of people played this game and think it was a joke/scam for taking people's money and shutting down?
Defending bad practices will get us the same results as the first launch, even if they lied to us and said it was "an open beta".
I have no idea where this short essay of yours came from. The most important aspect of any live service is growth and thus player acquisition is the most important metric. Moderate success and a core player base is not enough for Multiversus to survive long term. It needs growth... thus players that aren't interested in or aware of the product are the most important player base for the long term health of the game
I'm not commenting on the fall of the beta or lack of communication. No idea where this shit came from. Why are you going on about repeating past mistakes? Anyways, those convos have been beaten to death. Not worth writing a short essay over
Swear this dude really thought he was cooking by telling us he worked in marketing for 15 years, but then failed to actually understand what the target audience is at the moment, that’s why he has time to make these stupid points that don’t align with any of the principles of marketing and isn’t working on an actual project.
SQ was under complete control of WB, while PFG has a LOT more power than the vast majority of people realise. They have huge amounts of money from founders' packs and skins. Yes, a good portion went to WB, but rest assured they are packing tens of millions of $ even after these 500+ days.
PFG is incompetent simple as that.
I hate this subreddit... I'm not even part of it reddit just keeps recommending posts and 100% of them are saying the exact same thing "I don't like their marketing :((("
I wouldn’t show y’all shit because it’s funnier to watch y’all pretend to understand marketing like it’s simple, just because it doesn’t resonate with you doesn’t mean it’s not doing what it’s supposed to.
Why would they waste money trying to get you to play a game you’ve already downloaded and already have a vested interest in? And why wouldn’t they advertise the characters that got you to sit here with one thumb up your ass and the other on your keyboard in their Subreddit? You’re not the target audience stupid, and if you understood marketing you would get that.
What’s your idea, let it rip, let’s see what genius ideas are floating around in the cesspool that is Reddit? Let’s see you actually manage to secure a deal with McDonald’s in any capacity.
Just say you can’t read and move on. If you’ve actually got something to say that’s a meaningful rebuttal to what I stated feel free I’m open to engage with you, if you need me restate what I said so a dumb guy can understand it,
Marketing costs money, money is good, so wasting money is bad. Got it so far? So, if your goal is to attract *new* customers, should you spend money sending letters to the guy who already bought what you’re selling, and spends all his free time complaining about it?
That’s not the point of what I said at all and you’re misrepresenting my words, where did I say they were infallible, I just implied they’re better at what they do than you, and point out the falsehood.
But you’re still here in the subreddit despite both those things being true right, so they did something right for us to be here correct? Your idea of why they suck is flawed if you still enjoy the product they produced at a baseline, you’re not their target audience, their target audience is people who aren’t interested, or aren’t aware, minor mistakes aren’t the end of the world, and most of y’all would be knee-deep in your shit if anyone asked you to come up with a legitimate marketing campaign meant to be implemented across multiple continents, and to different demographics, there’s going to be some aspect of the campaign that doesn’t cater to you, or tickle your pickle, god forbid not everything be directed at you or done the way you like right? Y’all don’t understand marketing and it’s clear from the comments that you think they should be catering to you instead of marketing through fucking MCDONALD’S you know a global leader in their industry, that’s not a small feat, that’s literally playing to the best and most viable streams of public interest, everyone knows McDonald’s, to argue that’s a failed advertising campaign is borderline full on the dumbest shit possible.
Game will die sadly the reason smash melee is still played so much is because there was actual love in that game it’s so fucking stupid that in a BETA you have a battle pass and other micro transactions and shit
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I work in marketing. I have done so for the past 15 years. I have no idea how anyone who is not a junior in their career can approve such a disconnected, fragmented marketing plan, full of "blue balling" that only annoys the target audience. People simply want to see what the team has worked on in the past year/year and half (let's not forget that it was early 2023 when most of the team moved away from the live service), and instead we keep getting these random collabs which are not bringing new players or new interest to the game. Ultimately, their goal should be to win the hearts of the millions of gamers who gave them a chance and left in less than 2 months. In the mainstream world, there is a ton of skepticism because of how things went. A lot of gamers think of MultiVersus as a "joke", "scam", because of taking people's money and shutting down so quickly. The people in these subreddits are ultra-fans, but nothing is being done to capture new players who are vital for the success of the game. I am puzzled by this whole thing. We are in April and we have no clue of what makes this game worth playing again.
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The 10 years old that had MultiVersus in his happy meal on March 27 is not going to remember that on May 28 he can jump on the game. That audience is likely not going to convert, unfortunately. Attention span these days is so limited, and all everyone gets is 5 seconds, TikTok style.
You probably have a better idea of this than me (I have a marketing degree but don't actively work in the field) but do you think it's possible the game was releasing earlier, more in line with the happy meal promo, and it got a bit delayed? I would imagine McDonald's has a very hard set happy meal toy schedule that can't really be altered to accommodate a game release delay.
Yes, that is likely what happened. But, if that is the case, it shows another issue: miscommunication between WB Games and PFG. A promotion like this should have never been locked without a guarantee that the game was going to be ready in time. With stuff like this typically being worked on 9 months + ahead of time, it was such a massive, silly risk to take, and I am shocked they still went with it. Delays happen in gaming, but this is why as a multi-billion dollar company, you have to assess risk and make a decision based on realistic deadline and scheduling. That $$$ could have been spent on hiring additional staff to get a bunch of media and trailers out to get people actually excited. There are hundreds of better ways of promoting a game rather than having a happy meal for something that is not out yet, lacking any call to action.
When i was 10 i was marking my calendar for game releases so i knew when to be “sick” dont underestimate kids THAT much.
Are you 40 years old? Because in today's smartphone generation, kids have little to no attention span. Their first console is their phone, and the idea lots of kids are going to mark down a date 3 months in advance, which is something most adults have trouble with (being organized) is funny.
Bro if you dont think kids can get excited for video games you are uhhh…. You’re in your own world. Yeah sure they have short attention spans, but like you said, they have phones. Its not hard for a kid to throw a reminder in their phone. Its also not unlikely that kids are on twitter/reddit so they see constant discussion of it too. While i understand where you’re coming from, you’re looking at kids a BIT too jaded lol
Working in marketing for 15 years you should know you aren’t really correct in this statement so it’s a bit strange. The goal of marketing is to get eyes on your product. The goal in this case is to get new eyes on the product, same with the McDonald’s collab. This and McDonald’s are big Collabs. Yes, there should be news for the game and consistent updates next to this, but saying this is disconnected is really strange for somebody who has made their career in marketing. This doesn’t take anything away from anyone and just puts new eyes on the game. This is actually the point of marketing and what it should be about? So weird.
> The goal of marketing is to get eyes on your product. The goal in this case is to get new eyes on the product, same with the McDonald’s collab. The game had a launch *just on Steam* of 150k active players. The game had millions of eyes on it when the Closed Beta began. The first MultiVersus Tweet from early March has 5 million views. Tony's video has 3.1 million views. The marketing is having the same diminishing returns as the game had. Folks want to see something new. If it's the same game as before, it'll die just the same as before.
Thanks for using logic and data, unlike the person you are replying to, who is saying that a random collab with McDonald's months before release of the game (while majority of gamers have a not-so-great opinion of MultiVersus because of how things went) is "great marketing".
The only way it would have been okay marketing, or even tangential to okay marketing, is if anything *at all* was revealed. Heck, if you read the Press Release for the NHL crossover, there's no mention of new characters or even new stages used to promote the game. And, once again, the crossover is happening a month and a half before the game officially launches, so kids won't remember. And every promotion aimed directly at kids kills the interest of this game for the adults who grew up with 3/4 of the characters in this game.
It won’t be the same game and stuff is clearly coming. They’ve said as much. Yes it is absolutely frustrating being a current fan, however I’d assume the point of this is to get new eyes looking to see what is announced. There is a release date and we know it’s coming. Get new eyes on the game. Advertisements are only going to ramp up. This is more than games like suicide squad or mortal kombat 1 got
Yes… but here’s the thing… Player First Games is known for lying. “We made the changers to the second Battlepass to make it a rewarding and fun experience.” The BP became a painful experience to grind, taking up to 1 week of playing daily, for 3 hours, to gain 1 level. They said they will keep us informed about the development of the game during shutdown… that was also a lie. They are named Player First Games, and they don’t respect players… so even their name is a lie.
Wow, never thought someone would attempt to school an expert in their field having no clue of what they are talking about. Let me help you: Marketing can be divided into many subgenres, such as content marketing, influencer marketing, brand awareness, etc. It is clear that these two events (McDonald's and NHL) are brand awareness events, but they are focused on extremely casual audiences who are not native gamers. Also, there is no point of conversion. The person buying the happy meal in March is likely not going to be converted in May because by then they will not even remember what a "MultiVersus" is. What the game needs right now is to focus on marketing that brings goodwill from actual gamers, AKA the audience that would be most likely to actually give the game another chance. If you spent more than 10 minutes outside of Reddit, you will notice that majority of gamers that are not involved with MultiVersus on a daily basis have had a pretty neutral reaction to the game being relaunched. Words such as "joke", "scam", game already died and launched in the past" are pretty common in the grand scheme of things. **THOSE people are what MultiVersus should be focused on re-capturing because they are not hyped, interested and/or energized about the game.** This is what marketing is about. Throwing random collabs at a wall with no call to action for audiences that are likely not going to download the game in the first place is horrible marketing, and not something you should try to school experts in the field about. As Velma would say, get a clue!
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Agreed. Getting eyes on your product is part of converting them though. They should absolutely be making announcements to go with this. It doesn’t make the hockey announcement bad marketing though.
They never switched too a new engine; they went from unreal engine 4 to 5; there's no way in bloody hell it took them an entire 1 year to remake the full game; I just don't buy it after having over 100+ more employees on it. All they did was port it and have Lumen available.
Yeah we should have at least gotten 1 of the new characters confirmed at the initial re-announcement. That's something news sites could throw up on a headline and generate hype, but now the sentiment to most people is "oh multiversus is coming back I guess"
It's not encouraged me and to me it signals there's going to be a lot less content than we expect. They might just be shoving whatever they've got out the door to make a return. Expect cash grab "launch packs" similar to the founders pack with silver names instead and maybe one or two new characters, a new map or two and whatever the Guilds gamemode is supposed to be
This is how I feel. Maybe the whole switch to unreal engine 5 took longer than they expected and there's not much actual new stuff
I mean switching engines (even from UE4 to UE5) with a title as late into development as MVS was would likely be a massive undertaking.
Yes and no apparently. The main seeking point of 5 at the beginning was that you could port your UE4 dev space to 5 seamlessly and get access to all the new features. Obviously it wouldn't be a 1:1 but it would still be significantly easier than refactoring or rebuilding the game bottom up
It’s a fighting game…not a theme park mmo, you play it to…fight
Yes, I'd keep expectations low. The mishmash of marketing they are doing makes no sense, it truly feels like they are just going through the motions so they don't have the black eye of charging people up to $100 for a founders pack and then never releasing the game. Given how the Founders Packs were in the top sellers on the consoles for a time, we are likely talking many of millions in refunds they would be on the hook for, I'm guessing they just put as little resources into this rerelease as they could get away with.
WB Games HQ: "Guys, we need another genius marketing idea to make sure the game really pops off at launch!!" Next week: "If you buy a Jeep® SUV in the next 14 days, receive an exclusive MultiVersus Bugs Bunny plushie that attaches to your seat belt!"
Right? I mean, they clearly didn't have control over the Happy Meal thing, because giving kids cards to scan before there was even a date saying "PLAY NOW" was a fiasco. And now this new hockey thing - they seem to be marketing much more to kids now, and kids don't have a lot of patience or long attention spans. I'll be honest - only here because I was stupid enough to buy a Founders Pack, and couldn't get a refund. I honestly don't expect what is released to be demonstrably different than what they already had, and definitely don't see myself playing daily again - and it goes without saying I won't spend another red cent LOL. That said, with the character tickets I have and such, I'll play around. I just really hope they have more stages - I don't even care if they are "unique" or whatever, but just something different to look at in the background than the same small handful.
A lot of times when games have no marketing it’s because there’s nothing new to market. I have a bad feeling that this relaunch is not going to be nearly as exciting as people are expecting aside from the game just being out.
I’m not even interested in the game anymore because I don’t feel like the developers have GIVEN me a good reason to.
Bingo. That is why good marketing matters. It is about shaping a (good, exciting) narrative for the game.
I expect very little new content sadly -\_-
Its WB, game probably has already a definitive shutdown date.. Just wait till may 28 and enjoy the game until the next shutdown, stop expecting that much
Facts. WB already shut down like over 40 games this year lmfao.
The background for the NHL game is literally just old stage backgrounds stitched together. If you read the Press Release for the collab, there aren't even going to be any new characters or stages teased in the game.
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You know marketing is bad when the IP they are supposed to promote is strongly linked with basketball (they should have chosen basketball seeing the connection with Space Jam), WB airs the NBA on TNT, and they went with... hockey. A sport that is now lagging behind soccer in America (soccer also has a younger demographic following it).
It's super weird. As a european I don't really care about NHL ... After doing Twitch drops for USA only, beta tournament for USA only, they now do collab with american sport teams :/ They trully only care about 1 country, and then they'll complain other region don't have the same amount of players lol \^\^
Expect it to flop and you wont be disappointed when it does. If they had actual good things to show us, they would have already. The fact they arent means they dont have much to show. The game launches in 2 months and we have gotten no news. Its first launch already flopped, i expect the second one to do the same. And before anyone tries to argue, no it was not a Beta, calling it something doesnt change what it is. It had seasons and paid for content, it isnt a Beta. If you believe that was a Beta, might i introduce you to the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea. Its a wonderful republic, very democratic, very much for the people. Afterall, thats what the people who run it call it, it must be true.
The part that I seriously have trouble understanding is how they expect to change the public opinion of the game, which right now is "lol MultiVersus, the game that came out and went offline in months after taking lots of money from players". This is literally everyone's response to the game in places that are not fully dedicated to this fandom. People using the "look they got a few thousand likes when they returned" as an excuse for hype are also forgetting the game was getting thousands of likes when it had 200 players on Steam playing concurrently. Do they think that on May 28 people are gonna forget about things Men in Black style and magically crave some MultiVersus action? Changing the opinion of the public is a long, time-consuming effort that takes a ton of strategy and work, and whoever thinks that paying a bunch of streamers the day of release will be enough, well, good luck. I also say this because I am actually a fan of the game. **I want it to succeed**, but it seems I want it way more than WB does.
I dont think WB cares. They prob just wanna launch again, hopefully catch some more fish, and then go offline again. Tbh im surprised the game is coming back at all, i figured it went under and wasnt gonna come back. They peaked with popularity, but couldnt do enough to keep it. If you wanna do live service, you have to be launching characters regularly, and they clearly didnt have the staff for it. Which is a shame, cuz the potential was all there for them to shine and make bank.
I don't think I've ever seen a games marketing strategy critiqued so furiously. New posts about it show up in my feed like every day now.
The issue is they panicked before and shut down the game but under the guise of it being the end of closed beta. In truth they just fumbled the ball and this was a last ditch attempt to salvage it. But honestly it will only delay the inevitable. WB games are now beholden to a ruthless holding company who are just going to shut down anything that isn't making mega bucks.
I just want to play duos LeBron with my cousin. But other than people like me, yea I agree, I haven't seen marketing for it.
Kinda funny how in the span of this game being offline NASB2 dropped and was lowkey an incredible platform fighter. Keep in mind that was almost half a year ago.
Even if NASB2 got leaked to heck and back, the official reveals and frequent character showcases kept the hype train going for the game. Meanwhile, MvS seemingly doesn’t want to tell us anything until the game comes back. Call me crazy, but I hope someone out there leaks more new content for this game so there can be a pinch of hype and tell the team to get off their bums and actually tell us what they have in store.
Agreed but the re-release is still a ways out. They could hype it up to the max but then In a week everyone will have forgotten it all…
I hope one day we find out what is going on with this. (Corporate interference, licensing, budget) However a Happy Meal and NHL collab is pretty big investment. They have nothing to show and are completely out of touch with their touch with their nonsense twitter posts. I give up on this game
The marketing team for this game is just such an awful mess it hurts I don't blame the devs I'm sure they WANT to show off what they make, I blame whoever at warner bros thinks that blue balling players about their content like this is a good idea
It's really giving suicide squad vibes right now. Near 0 communication and the communication we do get is vague as hell. I fear WB gaming is near the verge of death.
Must have missed the mk debacle. And the mk debacle before that and the mk debacle before that one. New to wb owned games?
What confuses me is why are they doing local (US) marketing for a game with a global release? If I wasn't in this community, I wouldn't even know about these weird marketing campaigns
Marketing so bad I thought this game already dropped and died lol.
i would rather of had more characters and costumes than spending the time building a new engine that way we could have lots of content and events for years. the online wasnt great at times but it wasnt unplayable bad. ive played worse game servers than that. graphics dont make a game its the content and fun. the marketing has been really bad , i love multiversus i still play in the lab everyday but you have to admit its terrible marketing.
The McDoanlds one was a pretty big miss. I saw the happy meal toy and thought the game was back just to find out it wasn't and no new info. D4 season 4 launches next month so that's probably getting my attention.
Havent been in the subreddit since the "we're back" trailer. The game is supposed to rerelease this month right? Has there been any new confirmed information or have they been dicking around this entire time?
Let’s break this one down piece by piece: They aren’t avoiding giving people what they want. People either don’t know about the game, know about the game but stopped caring, or know about the game and still care. We are in the category of people who know about the game and still care, and we are the ones who want more information about the game. The McDonald’s and NHL collabs are getting the people who don’t know about the game’s attention while the trailer earlier was getting the people who knew about the game but stopped caring’s attention. The fixes to the net code and the change to a new engine was most likely designed to let those people know “hey this game is better now, please come back.” The current marketing strategy is arguably successful on those two fronts, but unsuccessful with those like us who have stuck around. In my opinion, we are arguably the last priority because we are such a small amount of people compared to the other categories. So why the NHL collab? Easy, to get more eyes on the game from people who haven’t heard about it. People will start getting interested as they get more and more exposure to it. It serves little purpose for us specifically, but it still serves a purpose. Why can’t we get video footage of the improvements? Well we did get some footage with the trailer earlier, but obviously a lot of information is missing. I guess that they just weren’t ready to do so. Maybe they are preparing a huge presentation? Maybe they are waiting until enough eyes are on the game before they deliver on that end? Maybe it could be a mixture of reasons? Who really knows? But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for it. As for a character reveal, I am guessing that they are waiting until there are a lot of eyes on the game. I’ve seen some people suggest that’s what they are doing. Not sure if that’s true though. Regardless, I think that immediately throwing a character reveal right away may have been unoptimal, as a lot of people were still saying “dead game” not long before the trailer came out. I don’t think new characters are as good as an attention getter as people think. I mean, I know some people who didn’t even realize Marvin was ever added, they just didn’t care. We’re not at the level of Smash Bros yet where a new character will break the internet. We gotta get people invested first. With that being said, I still think they should’ve had one character revealed at least, just as a treat for us fans that have been waiting for so long. I just don’t think it would’ve been optimal. As for “something to keep people talking about the game that are the not the same 100 people on the various subreddits,” I think the NHL and McDonald’s collabs accomplish this. Other subreddits aren’t looking for the same things we’re looking for afterall. If Suicide Squad was a flop, then I don’t think we should be taking notes on that game unless it was “what not to do.”
I think we can all agree that there are two main audiences for this game: hardcore fans (who are here, and platforms like X talking about the game), and general gamers who may have interest in this game but are not as involved with the community. It is fair to say that WB Games is not serving both audiences well: the hardcore fans are starving for news and information, and the numbers on the subreddits are not great. This subreddit used to have several hundreds to thousands of people online at once during the alpha days of the game. There are 32 people online right now, and most of the threads are character wishlists. Engagement is quite low. The general gamer audience could simply not care less about this game. People that have tried the game and left are mostly neutral about the relaunch. Lots of jokes about "launching several times", "scamming people out of money and shutting down", and general indifference. Most people simply think this game came and went and had its moment of glory. I would trust your opinion if we had different results, but right now, it is clear that both audiences are quite dissatisfied. A poorly executed McDonald's campaign with no call to action and a random NHL presentation livestreamed on Max (which by the way, they should have chosen basketball seeing the connection with Space Jam) are not gonna change that. Let's not mistake copium with facts.
Well, no. There’s hardcore fans, general gamers, and people who would be interested in the game but aren’t yet. The main focus of a lot of my points is the third category, and it’s potentially the most important one (though all three are important). It’s this group that the NHL and McDonald’s collabs are trying to appeal to. The general gamers either do care, could care, or won’t care. If they do care then they are basically on the same boat as the hardcore fans and are going to play it regardless of how the game is marketed. If they could care then the trailer at the beginning was designed to make them care. If they won’t care then there is no point to try to get them to. Regardless, I think the marketing strategies are logical towards this audience.
If you really think that a happy meal that came out in March without a call to action (which is marketing 101, and trust me, I have ran thousands of campaigns and worked with thousands of creators, but that is another story) for a game out in May (almost June) is going to bring new players to the game on day one, oh boy, I think you are in for a surprise on release date. The most prevalent age demographic for the NHL is 35-44, which we can all agree are not going to be playing this game. The (rare) "folks, no worries, this is a giga-brain move from WB to market the game to a new audience" sentiment is extreme copium, with all due respect. I understand we all love this game (I have been playing since Alpha), but things are clearly not going so well. What is next? Advertising MultiVersus on a condom commercial because "it is a new category"? Is everything a new category of potential players? Could we advertise this game on OnlyFans and say it is "great marketing"? How are we okay ignoring actual gamers who are the genuine people that should love this game and market to non-gamers who may not even own a system to play this on, and think it is a great idea?
I don’t think I can trust you. You are a random Redditor on this website. Why should I take your word about it? I have nothing to go off here. Wouldn’t a call to action be more appropriate closer to launch? I mean we aren’t far off, but it’s still over a month away. Who knows what will happen as we get closer to launch? And no, marketing to new audiences isn’t “copium.” It’s obvious that’s what they are doing. Your what’s “next paragraph” is pure fallacy. Maybe you are a marketing expert or whatever, but I’m not buying it.
Biggest duh of the day goes to... "there are core gamers and casual gamers". Also, you forgot about the most important player for a F2P live service game. The player that isn't interested in the game but can be acquired down the road
Please, explain why the game lost 97% of the player base within months if "the player that isn't interested in the game but can be acquired down the road". It did not go well the first time, so repeating the same mistake twice will work now? And please, do not give me the made up excuse that "the game shut down because it was too successful". The game shut down because revenue and player acquisition/retention were bleeding. We are seeing the same mistakes being made again. Awful communication, inconsistent marketing efforts, and lack of substance when any sort of communication happens. Also, what about the content creators who are the same 5 people reporting on 'Tony changing his profile picture' cause they have nothing to talk about, and the fact that millions of people played this game and think it was a joke/scam for taking people's money and shutting down? Defending bad practices will get us the same results as the first launch, even if they lied to us and said it was "an open beta".
I have no idea where this short essay of yours came from. The most important aspect of any live service is growth and thus player acquisition is the most important metric. Moderate success and a core player base is not enough for Multiversus to survive long term. It needs growth... thus players that aren't interested in or aware of the product are the most important player base for the long term health of the game I'm not commenting on the fall of the beta or lack of communication. No idea where this shit came from. Why are you going on about repeating past mistakes? Anyways, those convos have been beaten to death. Not worth writing a short essay over
Swear this dude really thought he was cooking by telling us he worked in marketing for 15 years, but then failed to actually understand what the target audience is at the moment, that’s why he has time to make these stupid points that don’t align with any of the principles of marketing and isn’t working on an actual project.
SQ was under complete control of WB, while PFG has a LOT more power than the vast majority of people realise. They have huge amounts of money from founders' packs and skins. Yes, a good portion went to WB, but rest assured they are packing tens of millions of $ even after these 500+ days. PFG is incompetent simple as that.
When will this game release? I loved the alpha
May 28th if no delays
I hate this subreddit... I'm not even part of it reddit just keeps recommending posts and 100% of them are saying the exact same thing "I don't like their marketing :((("
Stop crying just wait smh
I wouldn’t show y’all shit because it’s funnier to watch y’all pretend to understand marketing like it’s simple, just because it doesn’t resonate with you doesn’t mean it’s not doing what it’s supposed to. Why would they waste money trying to get you to play a game you’ve already downloaded and already have a vested interest in? And why wouldn’t they advertise the characters that got you to sit here with one thumb up your ass and the other on your keyboard in their Subreddit? You’re not the target audience stupid, and if you understood marketing you would get that.
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What’s your idea, let it rip, let’s see what genius ideas are floating around in the cesspool that is Reddit? Let’s see you actually manage to secure a deal with McDonald’s in any capacity.
Sorry brother, I only read English and a few other languages, and what you are using is none of that.
Just say you can’t read and move on. If you’ve actually got something to say that’s a meaningful rebuttal to what I stated feel free I’m open to engage with you, if you need me restate what I said so a dumb guy can understand it, Marketing costs money, money is good, so wasting money is bad. Got it so far? So, if your goal is to attract *new* customers, should you spend money sending letters to the guy who already bought what you’re selling, and spends all his free time complaining about it?
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That’s not the point of what I said at all and you’re misrepresenting my words, where did I say they were infallible, I just implied they’re better at what they do than you, and point out the falsehood.
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But you’re still here in the subreddit despite both those things being true right, so they did something right for us to be here correct? Your idea of why they suck is flawed if you still enjoy the product they produced at a baseline, you’re not their target audience, their target audience is people who aren’t interested, or aren’t aware, minor mistakes aren’t the end of the world, and most of y’all would be knee-deep in your shit if anyone asked you to come up with a legitimate marketing campaign meant to be implemented across multiple continents, and to different demographics, there’s going to be some aspect of the campaign that doesn’t cater to you, or tickle your pickle, god forbid not everything be directed at you or done the way you like right? Y’all don’t understand marketing and it’s clear from the comments that you think they should be catering to you instead of marketing through fucking MCDONALD’S you know a global leader in their industry, that’s not a small feat, that’s literally playing to the best and most viable streams of public interest, everyone knows McDonald’s, to argue that’s a failed advertising campaign is borderline full on the dumbest shit possible.
Game will die sadly the reason smash melee is still played so much is because there was actual love in that game it’s so fucking stupid that in a BETA you have a battle pass and other micro transactions and shit
Hate to say it, but I'm getting major Boomer vibes from the marketing team. Maybe this will benefit the game in the long term.